ECB’s Elderson says a refocusing exercise launching in mid-October will review accumulated supervisory measures

A stocktaking of accumulated SSM supervisory measures sits in the deregulatory stream that European officials have aired before, where the complaint from banks has been the layering of requirements and Pillar 2 add-ons rather than any single rule. Elderson, who heads the ECB's supervisory arm, has been consistent in framing such exercises as rationalisation rather than a lowering of capital or supervisory standards, and past reviews of this kind have tended to produce procedural simplification at the margins rather than material relief for bank balance sheets. The read-through for bank credit and periphery spreads runs through the capital channel: any genuine reduction in the supervisory burden would ease bank funding and profitability, while a purely administrative tidying exercise leaves both untouched. What separates the two is whether the review's eventual scope includes Pillar 2 methodology and buffer calibration, or is confined to process and reporting. The near-term tells are the terms of reference when the exercise formally launches, whether national authorities and the Commission line up behind it, and follow-up remarks from other SSM officials. As a speech-announced initiative rather than a decision, this is an early-stage signal.